oracknows | June 10, 2010Let's see. Now that I'm back from Chicago, having recently attended a major cancer meeting, not to mention having already blogged about the meeting, what to do next? Sure, the whole thing about Andrew Wakefield finding himself just one step away from appearing on Jeff Rense's or Alex Jones's radio show was amusing in the extreme to me, and no doubt there will be much more blogging material to mine in that vein, but if you really want to bring home the crazy there's only one place shy of Whale.to to visit.
That's right, I'm talking about that wretched hive of medical scum and villainy, Mike…
oracknows | June 9, 2010Thanks to my "friends" at Generation Rescue and Age of Autism, I've learned of something that is so absolutely appropriate, so perfect in its complete perfection (if you know what I mean), it brought a smile to my face. It turns out that anti-vaccine hero and martyr Andrew Wakefield, who has been so disgraced that he's left speaking at pathetic anti-vaccine rallies with even more pathetic sing-alongs with anti-vaccine music (if you can call it that), is being interviewed again, and the venue could not be more of a perfect match for "Dr. Andy's" unique skill set and place in the anti-vaccine…
oracknows | June 9, 2010Well, I'm home.
As I've mentioned before, I attended the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago. Although one of the problems with ASCO, at least for surgeons like me, is that it is a meeting completely dominated by medical oncology. Quite frankly, not that much of what is presented at ASCO has a lot of relevance to my surgical practice. There are exceptions, of course. In fact, Monday morning's sessions on breast cancer were the best of science-based medicine that will change practice. Perhaps I'll blog about that tomorrow or later in the week. As I…
oracknows | June 8, 2010Orac is on his way home from the ASCO meeting in Chicago. Shockingly, he was so busy that he didn't bother to write anything last night, his last night in Chicago. Fortunately, he found something from the archives that's perfect for this occasion. This is something he wrote in 2007, after the last time he attended the ASCO meeting in Chicago. That means if you haven't been reading at least three years, this post is new to you. It also serves as an entry point for few pictures I want to post, just as soon as I get a chance to suck them out of my iPhone and onto my computer after I get home and…
oracknows | June 7, 2010Orac is currently away at the ASCO meeting in Chicago. Shockingly, he was so busy that he didn't bother to write anything last night. Fortunately, he found something from the archives that's perfect for this occasion. Although it's not about ASCO specifically, ASCO is an even bigger meeting. This was originally written in 2005 on the "old' Respectful Insolence blog and then reposted in 2006. That' means if you haven't been reading at least three and a half years, it's new to you. It's also related to scientific meetings. Hmmm. This reminds me. I really should update this or do more…
oracknows | June 7, 2010Orac is currently away at the ASCO meeting in Chicago. Shockingly, he was so busy that he didn't bother to write anything last night. Fortunately, he found something from the archives that's perfect for this occasion. This was originally written in 2005 on the "old' Respectful Insolence blog and then reposted in 2006. That' means if you haven't been reading at least three and a half years, it's new to you. It's also related to scientific meetings. Hmmm. This reminds me. I really should update this or do more installations in the saga, even if five years late. If you have any ideas, leave 'em…
oracknows | June 6, 2010I forgot to mention on Friday that I'm currently in Chicago attending the ASCO meeting. It's a lot of fun seeing the latest that science-based medicine has to offer, although ASCO isn't always my cup of tea. The reason is that it's very heavily based in medical oncology and chemotherapy, and there aren't a lot of surgical talks. Another reason is that it's a clinical meeting; so there isn't a lot of basic science. Still, there's plenty to keep my busy, and my blogging may be irregular over the next couple of days. Worse comes to worst, I'll post a "best of Orac" or two. Nothing short of death…
oracknows | June 4, 2010Since its very inception five years ago, The Huffington Post has been, to steal a phrase from Star Wars, a wretched hive of scum and villainy, at least when it comes to anything resembling medicine. Of course, that's the problem. Very little, if anything, published in HuffPo resembles actual science-based medicine. The vast majority of medicine published there consists either of anti-vaccine screeds that are beyond stupid, quantum woo courtesy of Deepak Chopra, or pure, dangerous quackery, such as advocating homeopathy for H1N1 and acid-base woo for cancer. It's so bad that on more than one…
oracknows | June 3, 2010It occurs to me that I haven't written about this topic in quite a while, but a recent event makes me think that maybe now's the time to revisit this topic. I'm referring to Holocaust denial. Newer readers may not know that part of what got me involved in online discussions back in the late 1990s was Holocaust denial. Indeed, a lengthy post about how I discovered Holocaust denial was one of the earliest substantive posts on this blog, popping up a mere month after I started blogging, which just so happened to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. That post…
oracknows | June 2, 2010First, it was anti-vaccine "martyr" Andrew Wakefield's infamous 1998 Lancet paper.
Then it was his equally incompetent 2009 NeuroToxicology paper.
Now it's Wakefield's 2000 American Journal of Gastroenterology paper:
Errata, Corrigenda and Retractions
Am J Gastroenterol 2010; 105:1214; doi:10.1038/ajg.2010.149
Retraction: Enterocolitis in Children With Developmental Disorders
A J Wakefield, A Anthony, S H Murch, M Thomson, S M Montgomery, S Davies, J J O'Leary, M Berelowitz and J A Walker-Smith
Am J Gastroenterol 2000; 95:2285-2295
On 28 January 2010, the UK General Medical Council's Fitness…
oracknows | June 2, 2010After diving into a heapin' helpin' of sheer craziness over the last week or two (well, except for yesterday, when I deconstructed an acupuncture study, which, while not crazy, certainly was misguided), I think it's time for a bit of self-absorbed navel gazing. After all, isn't that what bloggin's all about? Oh, wait, that's what I do almost every day here. No, what I really mean is that I came across an article that struck rather close to home regarding my career trajectory. So, if you don't mind, for one day I'll leave behind the rabid anti-vaccine loons, the homepaths, the alt-med mavens,…
oracknows | June 1, 2010A couple of weeks ago I made what I thought to be a rather obvious observation, namely that the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism is anti-vaccine, not, as it claims, pro-safe vaccine. One bit of the copious evidence that belies the claim is the obsessive focus of that blog on Gardasil. Even if science hadn't failed time and time again to find a link between vaccines and autism, even in the most fevered dreams of anti-vaccine zealots Gardasil couldn't have anything to do with autism because it is usually administered when a girl is between 10-13, long past the age when autism is most…
oracknows | June 1, 2010Of all the "alternative" therapies out there, arguably the most studied is the modality known as acupuncture. Perhaps the reason is that, unlike homeopathy, which based on physics, chemistry, and biology alone is so implausible that, for it to "work," huge swaths of well-established physics and chemistry would have to be shown to be not just wrong but extravagantly and outrageously wrong (making homeopathy far more akin to magic than science), or reiki, which, when you come right down to it, is nothing more than faith healing based on Eastern mysticism rather than Christianity, acupuncture…
oracknows | May 31, 2010Today is a holiday in the U.S., Memorial Day. This is a day when we remember our war dead, but the three day weekend that accompanies the last Monday in May is also viewed as the unofficial start of summer. Consequently, I decided to take it easy and simply post a bit of e-mail from a reader apparently with the 'nym trose313:
You need a good dose of positive energy. Such negative rantings cannot be good. Plus, you are very one sided, which is never good. There is a lot of wonderful alternative treatments out there and when one hides behind such slanted information as you, I tend to wonder…
oracknows | May 29, 2010Damn! I knew I made my promise to myself not to write about vaccines again for at least a few days too soon! Whenever I do that, it seems, one of two things happens. Either something important happens that, having become, however it happened, the go-to blogger for commenting on the anti-vaccine movement, I can't ignore.
This is not what happened.
The second thing that happens whenever I make that promise to myself is that someone from the anti-vaccine movement writes something that's unintentional pure comic gold.
This is what happened.
Someone named Curt Linderman, Sr. characterized the…
oracknows | May 28, 2010The week is coming to a close, and the Memorial Day holiday beckons for those of us in the U.S. I've spent most of this week blogging about the anti-vaccine movement, and I do need a rest. Next week, I promise to try to stay away from this issue as much as possible, not just to keep you from getting bored with it but, more importantly, to give myself the periodic rest from the concentrated idiocy to preserve my sanity. True, I can never guarantee that something won't come up that will force me to break my self-imposed vacation from the craziness, but I think that a few days away from this…
oracknows | May 27, 2010After a week of some of the most amazing anti-vaccine craziness that I've seen in quite a while, a week that started with anti-vaccine hero Andrew Wakefield's name being struck off the list of licensed medical practitioners in the U.K. During the entire week, there was (and is ongoing) an anti-vaccine crank conference known as Autism One. By midweek, the anti-vaccine loons had their rally in Grant Park, a perfect storm of crankery in which the "health freedom" movement met the anti-vaccine movement. When Harry Met Sally, it wasn't. In any case, skeptics, despite short notice, still managed to…
oracknows | May 27, 2010I've written about the credulous mass of misinformation that is TV's The Doctors before. As you might imagine, I'm not impressed with the quality of the medical information that is dispensed on this show. It's everything I hate about glitzed up medicine as TV entertainment, particularly the vacuously beautiful hosts. I thought Dr. Stork and his merry band of bubble-brained doctors had hit their low point, but I was wrong. Earlier this week, they appeared to be extolling the claimed virtues of (or at least not treating particularly skeptically the claims for)--of all things--urine therapy. Don…
oracknows | May 27, 2010I don't mean to beat up on Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick. I really don't. I realize I rather harshly criticized him yesterday for being so hostile to the concept of "denialism," to the point where he characterized even the use of the term as a means of "suppressing" free speech. Normally, that criticism would have been enough. If Dr. Fitzpatrick answered, that would be all well and good; if he didn't, I'd move on and forget about it. Unfortunately, I was made aware of another article he published at his usual gig at Spiked Online entitled Censorship is not the answer to health scares.
Damn if it…